Our Pillars
Cradle to Career
Giving everyone the chance to graduate ready for college and career.
Healthy Families
Helping families overcome the trauma of poverty one step at a time.
Equity in Leadership
Uncovering root causes of poverty.
Cradle to Career
Giving everyone the chance to graduate ready for college & career.
Nearly one-half of the students in the Greater Triangle are not ready for college. Together, we can do something to help them.
Through United Way’s Cradle to Career focus, we’re investing in nonprofit partners that are supporting our kids on their educational journeys from early learning programs to workforce development and beyond.
Our 2023-2025 Cradle to Career Impact Partners:
Healthy Families
Helping families overcome the trauma of poverty one step at a time.
Children living in households that don’t have enough nutritious food are more likely to fall behind in school. Providing access to healthy meals is one important step in breaking the cycle of poverty.
By focusing on Healthy Families, United Way of the Greater Triangle is able to partner with local nonprofit organizations providing children and families with the housing, nutrition, health, and safety support needed to stabilize and overcome the trauma of poverty.
Our 2023-2025 Healthy Families Impact Partners:
Equity in Leadership
Uncovering root causes of poverty.
For 133 years, United Ways across the country have served those crushed under the weight of impoverished environments. That service has looked, felt, and sounded like charity. Yet the issues have not gone away.
The next 133 years demand more. United Way of the Greater Triangle is up to the challenge to act, which is why we’re making a strategic commitment to both charity and justice — supporting the solutions that combat the immediate effects of poverty while also focusing on long-term solutions that attack the root causes.
10 to Watch
As a community, we haven’t supported enough minority leaders working hard to represent our neighbors in need. Through 10 To Watch, we’re addressing racial, gender, and power disparities in leadership by empowering local communities, amplifying the voices of nonprofit leaders of color and women, and preparing the broader community for these leaders’ continued success.
Impact Investing
Eradicating poverty will take a combination of short-term solutions and systemic change. That’s why we’re diversifying the way we support impact here in the Triangle and focusing on equity in everything from emergency support (through our Rapid Response Fund model) to our community impact strategies (through our Cradle to Career and Healthy Families pillars). In addition, opportunities through our Equity In Leadership pillar, which are largely supported by the Anti-Racism Community Fund, are explicit and exclusive in the ways we allocate our resources to address the root cause and racist structures affecting our most vulnerable neighbors today.
Justice-Oriented Storytelling
Statistical data isn’t enough to shift our community’s consciousness from one that simply supports eradicating poverty to one that understands how people end up in poverty and the barriers designed to keep them there. Using a justice-focused approach to storytelling, we’re prioritizing anecdotal data by connecting local nonprofits with the community narrative and putting the power of the stories back into the hands of the individuals experiencing the challenges.
Neighborhood Impact
In 2021, United Way of the Greater Triangle launched its Neighborhood Impact work with the goal of empowering local leaders to define what is right and wrong in their communities.